Econ 184b, Econometrics, Fall 2021

Module 0: Kickstarter

Xinde “James” Ji

Department of Economics, Brandeis Univeristy

Office: Sachar 001A

Office hours: Wednesday 2:00-5:00 pm

Here’s where my office is:

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Here are two truths and a lie about me:

Why econometrics?

Economics as a science

Economics as a science

Modern Physics

And now we know that

\[h = \frac{1}{2}gt^2\]

with the assumption that there is no air resistance.

(Of course, air resistance is also something that Newtonian mechanics can model.)

Galileo’s experiment

Now, what is econometrics, again?

Question: How much is the return to education? Does that cover the actual/opportunity cost of going to college?

Theory:

Now we do what?

Data on schooling and wage earnings

What could be wrong?

The credibility revolution

And it is not just economics

Yiqing Xu, Professor of Political Science at Stanford University:

“The field of political science has been modernized in the recent years by borrowing from economics - not only information asymetry, transaction cost … But also the quantitative methods in econometrics.”

And in other fields

A roadmap of what we will be doing